it most definitely shouldn't be all in one place... the fact that 30% were all in one place was what scared the pants off everyone involved.

this is true for the coins themselves but also equally true for the power to control the network. the more decentralized the better...the devs have said that they will not roll back ever again.. but it does leave people wondering what is going to happen if this kind theft happens again or if someone puts a gun to their heads.

As a general rule, just about everyone around here has some skin in the game when it comes to Bitcoin. Since the sudden theft of 4 million Bitcoin would almost surely be a lethal blow to Bitcoin (and quite possibly to the very principles of cryptocurrency at the same time), I would love to see what song the people around here sing in the face of such an event.

I bet it would be vastly different for quite a few people in this thread.

if I recall correctly Mt Gox alone lost about 7% of all bitcoins to hacks.so greater than 4% has already happened and bitcoin is not dead.

regardless of PoW or PoS... if a single entity had manged to steal 30% of bitcoins there's no doubt in my mind that it would have shaking bitcoin to the core also.I'm not arguing that PoS is the problem only that PoS combined with small coin size encourages centralization and centralization is the problem.

no single entity has 51% of the hashing power .. nobody has even 30% of the hashing power of bitcoin so what you are arguing is theoretical.

sure someone could buy 51% percent of the hashing power but it would cost them several hundreds of millions of dollars and as I said it would only be temporary because the difficulty rises exponentially.

even if someone has 51% of the hashing power for an extended period of time.. they cannot control 51% of the coins..

someone quite easily managed to steal 30% of vericoin through very little effort at all .. all they needed to do was buy, borrow or steal 21% more and they would have been in a monopoly position for the production of vericoins for as long as they held onto their coins. they would not need an air conditioned facility, they would not need to keep upgrading their hashing power to stay on top, they would not need to keep paying massive electricity bills. They would only need to run 1 computer and they would be able to produce 51% of all new coins for eternity (if they so wished)

now if someone managed to steal 30% of all bitcoins in existance or even 20% that would be a very huge problem for the bitcoin economy... but someone having 51% hashing power and being able to produce 25 BTC every 10 minutes... that's not really comparable not even in the same ball park.

people who compare 51% PoW with 51% PoS attacks really do not understand the complete difference in scale of how much power each attacker has.being king for a day is nothing compared to being king forever.

(well at least until the coin gods hard fork you off your throne.. LOLZ)

1. we had ghash.io several times with over 51% hashpower, this is fact.

2. if someone has 51+% of the hashpower they control the network, because they can alter the blockchain after their will

3. yes someone stole 30% of all vericoin, what do you think would happen if someone manages to hack ghash.io? and maybe some other big pools on top of that.

4. the attacker would need to pay nothing if hes hacking big pools and gets control over them, initiate a double spend attack and give him millions of bitcoins for free - all that with just one computer.

5. of course there are differences between pos/pow, im not denying but if you look on a bigger scale its not much difference at all

As a general rule, just about everyone around here has some skin in the game when it comes to Bitcoin. Since the sudden theft of 4 million Bitcoin would almost surely be a lethal blow to Bitcoin (and quite possibly to the very principles of cryptocurrency at the same time), I would love to see what song the people around here sing in the face of such an event.

I bet it would be vastly different for quite a few people in this thread.

if I recall correctly Mt Gox alone lost about 7% of all bitcoins to hacks.so greater than 4% has already happened and bitcoin is not dead.

regardless of PoW or PoS... if a single entity had manged to steal 30% of bitcoins there's no doubt in my mind that it would have shaking bitcoin to the core also.I'm not arguing that PoS is the problem only that PoS combined with small coin size encourages centralization and centralization is the problem.

if I recall correctly Mt Gox alone lost about 7% of all bitcoins to hacks.so greater than 4% has already happened and bitcoin is not dead.

Gox "lost" a substantial amount, but from everything that I've seen, no one can really pinpoint when precisely they were lost, or if they were already absorbed into the market. It's was (and I guess one could hypothesize is) a slight shadow looming in the background. But it is still a far cry from the threat a sudden singularly identifiable theft of 30% of the Bitcoin in existence would pose.

well, i would think a better comparison would be if a big pool like ghash.io gets hacked and the attacker iniates an succesful double-spend attack.

if this gets noticed fast the best way to deal with it would be a rollback

do you understand what a double spend attack is?

with 51% you cannot double spend anyone else's coins only the ones you control.

so lets say you hack the ghash.io and manage to control if for a few hours before someone notices (say everyone watching the pool was asleep, all miners absolutely everyone using the pool fell asleep)

so you point the pool to your mining address and mange to mine some 2000 or so bitcoins.you then go ahead and transfer those coins to an exchange and buy up some LTC or some other coin with them. and then withdraw those LTC.once you have your LTC you then use your massive 51% hashing power to fork the network so that your 2000 bitcoin deposit effectively never happened. <-- the double spend.you have your 2000 btc and your bag of LTC...

meanwhile the miners and pool operators begin to wake up and take their hashing power off the pool.

this is what could happen in an absolute worst case scenario. a few million dollars stolen from the BTC network.

given the size of the bitcoin network of some 8 billion dollars, I doubt that even that handsome some would be enough to trigger a roll-back which would destroy and entire 8 hours worth of transactions and shake confidence in the network.

we are talking economies of scale here... as was said by one of the previous posters.

btw the attack in mintpal was not a double spend it was a simple SQL injection attack.but if the attacker was left to keep those 30% vericoins that were stolen then they could have used those coins for numerous attacks in the future.

if I recall correctly Mt Gox alone lost about 7% of all bitcoins to hacks.so greater than 4% has already happened and bitcoin is not dead.

Gox "lost" a substantial amount, but from everything that I've seen, no one can really pinpoint when precisely they were lost, or if they were already absorbed into the market. It's was (and I guess one could hypothesize is) a slight shadow looming in the background. But it is still a far cry from the threat a sudden singularly identifiable theft of 30% of the Bitcoin in existence would pose.

well, i would think a better comparison would be if a big pool like ghash.io gets hacked and the attacker iniates an succesful double-spend attack.

if this gets noticed fast the best way to deal with it would be a rollback

do you understand what a double spend attack is?

with 51% you cannot double spend anyone else's coins only the ones you control.

so lets say you hack the ghash.io and manage to control if for a few hours before someone notices (say everyone watching the pool was asleep, all miners absolutely everyone using the pool fell asleep)

so you point the pool to your mining address and mange to mine some 2000 or so bitcoins.you then go ahead and transfer those coins to an exchange and buy up some LTC or some other coin with them. and then withdraw those LTC.once you have your LTC you then use your massive 51% hashing power to fork the network so that your 2000 bitcoin deposit effectively never happened. <-- the double spend.you have your 2000 btc and your bag of LTC...

meanwhile the miners and pool operators begin to wake up and take their hashing power off the pool.

this is what could happen in an absolute worst case scenario. a few million dollars stolen from the BTC network.

given the size of the bitcoin network of some 8 billion dollars, I doubt that even that handsome some would be enough to trigger a roll-back which would destroy and entire 8 hours worth of transactions and shake confidence in the network.

we are talking economies of scale here... as was said by one of the previous posters.

yes exactly what you said. now imagine not some 2000 btc but 1 million btc and more, so we have the right scale to compare to the vrc theft.

Bitcoin has forked two times, significantly. One was in 2010 when someone was able to mint billions of Bitcoins. They had to go back 100 transactions and reset the chain. Thankfully, the network was really small then, and all Well you see Bitcoin had to fork there, as that hack exploited a flaw in the protocol. VeriCoin on the other hand had no need to fork as there was no flaw in the underlying protocol, this hack on MintPal was simply a theft.

What you and many others fail to understand, (or more believably use as excuse to FUD) is the fact that not rolling back would exactly lead to the situation in where protocol would be exploited.

Bitcoin has forked two times, significantly. One was in 2010 when someone was able to mint billions of Bitcoins. They had to go back 100 transactions and reset the chain. Thankfully, the network was really small then, and all Well you see Bitcoin had to fork there, as that hack exploited a flaw in the protocol. VeriCoin on the other hand had no need to fork as there was no flaw in the underlying protocol, this hack on MintPal was simply a theft.

What you and many others fail to understand, (or more believably use as excuse to FUD) is the fact that not rolling back would exactly lead to the situation in where protocol would be exploited.

yes exactly what you said. now imagine not some 2000 btc but 1 million btc and more, so we have the right scale to compare to the vrc theft.

why should I imagine that?

51% hashing power in a PoW system does not give you the power to take coins from anyone.

you cannot mine 1 million btc with stolen hashing power without people noticing well before you get there. do you know of some kind of magic spell to make the entire world fall asleep for some 6 months and not notice their miners aren't paying out ? because I sure don't.

even with 51% of all Vericoins which uses PoS you cannot take coins directly from people.

people gave their coins to mintpal. That is how the hacker was able to steal them.

if people were stupid enough to put 1 million BTC into an exchange where it could be hacked....*ahem* mt gox... then that should be their problem not the problem of the payment network.

the mintpal/vericoin hack only became a problem for the vericoin devs because it would have opened pandoras box.you just cannot let anyone control 30% of the coin supply of any coin (coin supply is not hashing power) and expect the network to function properly.. especially when those coins are stolen.

mintpal claims they weren't staking but what if they were? and what if another exchange is staking their pos coins using hot wallets.... this could just be the tip of the iceberg.

yes exactly what you said. now imagine not some 2000 btc but 1 million btc and more, so we have the right scale to compare to the vrc theft.

why should I imagine that?

51% hashing power in a PoW system does not give you the power to take coins from anyone.

you cannot mine 1 million btc with stolen hashing power without people noticing well before you get there. do you know of some kind of magic spell to make the entire world fall asleep for some 6 months and not notice their miners aren't paying out ? because I sure don't.

even with 51% of all Vericoins which uses PoS you cannot take coins from people.

people gave their coins to mintpal that is how the hacker was able to steal them.

if people were stupid enough to put 1 million BTC into an exchange where it could be hacked....*ahem* mt gox... then that should be their problem not the problem of the payment network.

the vericoin hack only became a problem for the vericoin devs because it would have opened pandoras box.you just cannot let anyone control 30% of the coin supply of any coin (coin supply is not hashing power) and expect the network to function properly.. especially when those coins are stolen.

i dont think you understood me.

ok one more time for you:

1. a great amount of bitcoins get stolen > 1 million by hacker

2. same hacker gets control over big mining pools, gets control over bitcoin network because 35%-51+% hashpower

The devs acted without fear of public crticism. They are also the devs not scared to show their faces.

I say they have the balls to get the job done whatever comes their way.

I have more faith in crypto than ever after this. I understand the idealists point of view. But thievery is something we have to be able to address in a more constructive way than letting them get away with it. Especially if its within reason, the technology allows it, and in the end, the most important THE COMMUNITY VOTES TO ACCEPT THE CHANGE.

Which is the point that FUDsters conveniently "forget" or "overlook". Had the community been against the fork we would have remained on the old blockchain/wallet and pnosker would have to just go make a new coin, we would have continued, or died, with the current vericoin and all the stolen coins.

As a decentralized community we reached consensus on this decision and went forward with it, no one was forced to upgrade to the new wallet/blockchain and if ONLY the 3 devs wanted to then it would not have happened. Period.

All the main devs did was provide the technical management to get it done quickly, veri quickly. No one mandated or forced anyone to do anything.

Don't like it, dump your coins and leave. That is a free decentralized market in action, you are free to go and we are free to stay, on a new blockchain, theft free.

If you want to blame, blame the exchange that left 8 million vericoins in a hot wallet staking out of greed.

Please don't attack Charlie Lee (coblee). He owns VeriCoin and is family. His criticism is justified.

Well Patrick Charlie Lee can be your god but he is VERY wrong this time around. And by being wrong in "his opinion" he is perpetuating not just the biggest flaw in cryptos but defending that the ostracism from the real world will continue. He lives, by his choosing and his opinions, in the bubble of the underworld or nerds who code, watch massive porn amounts, masturbate frequently and are high or doped most of the time. Yes I know a lot in the crypto community adhere to this short of lifestyle and it won't be me criticizing it -or any other lifestyle chosen by adults-, but the fact of the matter is that in that bubble no people from the outside has either a place nor a minimal interest in joining. It's the people that in the name of some form of self-laws and self-government (all of it BULLSHIT, by the way), not only justify thievery and fraud but promote it and even brag about it. It used to be stealing intellectual property and now it has escalated to stealing plain old fashioned money. And that has to stop, by a minimal progression through some semblance of ethics or, most likely, by real law. And regulation.

Meanwhile he dares to call you selfish because you refused to immolate yourself and your partners, forever, while allowing a thief to profit maybe in the millions of dollars at the expense of investors. That's some peculiar sense of "humor" right there. Why not asking directly for you and your partners to commit suicide because you have made a decision that, HOPEFULLY, will forever change crypto and convert it into something with a real practical use for an economy many times bigger than the nerdy coders now crippling it. Where is Litecoin, by the way, going? All the way to Palookaville, I'd say. Where's VRC? We don't know. But if Mr Boricuaman and his Black Hand don't put it out of business -and it is up to you to not allow that to happen, to a certain extent at least-, it is breaking off, or could be breaking off the pack towards a sensible, close to the real people mainstream assimilation.

So sorry but Mr. Charlie Lee is, to me, one asshole more perpetuating crime in crypto and hindering his progress. Yes, you acted selfishly in the way that it was preserving the coin you created that some asshole had marked for death because of the amazing negligence of MintPal. But you decision also saved the hard earned money of over 600 investors/traders. A whole community that believes in you and your partners and avoided another terrible blow to the perception of digital currencies by the mainstream. You didn't have much choice beyond self-immolation but what that selfish decision has and will accomplish, is nothin g short of remarkable.

Let's just say that from now on, just like it did when you gay put your real names out there, there's a before and after in crypto. Hopefully this will separate the assholes and criminal from the progressive ones that will take crypto currencies forward to reach the goals that the technology allows and NOT the political agendas of pathetic rejects and assorted criminals.

2. same hacker gets control over big mining pools, gets control over bitcoin network because 35%-51+% hashpower

3. double spends the amount of stolen bitcoins

4. ?

/edit

coin supply is in fact pos hashing power...

if you could in fact manage to steal or borrow 1 million bitcoins and then double spend them on an exchange and transfer them for another coin you wont get any argument from me.. if someone managed to do that it would be catastrophic.however you're talking 600 million dollars here.. I'm sure someone would notice your double spend attempt.

the point is though that in order to do that to bitcoin you would have to hack 2 places and pull it off before the network could react.and I would be very very surprised if the network failed to counter your move.if they did however fail then sure the only other option would be to try and hard fork you out... which would be a very difficult and costly process in itself given the size of the network.

I agree that would be theoretically possible to do on bitcoin but given the sheer size of the network and the fact that you have to carry out two successful attacks... it would far less likely than attacking a small PoS coin where you need only hack one place and then you can pretty much use those coins to wreak havoc on the network as many times as you like once you get them.

if such an attack happened on BTC it would probably be cheaper to just hire a small army of mercenaries to hunt you down and make sure everyone who holds the private keys to those stolen coins is eliminated.